Common Sense Substances Act of 2023

“Liberal Platform votes Yes. Personal consumption choices belong to individuals, not the state, provided public safety is protected — and this bill gets that balance right. Treating an 18-year-old as capable of deciding on alcohol is consistent with treating them as an adult everywhere else in law. Replacing marijuana prohibition with licensed retail, THC taxation, and roadside impairment testing swaps a failed ban for a competitive, accountable market — safety maintained, choice restored. Decriminalizing psychedelic possession in favor of treatment recognizes that criminal records rarely help anyone recover. Liberty, responsibility, and evidence-based regulation: this is what Liberal Platform stands for.”

“ABF supports personal responsibility, regulated markets and treatment where it is more effective than criminalisation. Licensed cannabis sales and treatment-led drug policy can reduce unnecessary criminal penalties while keeping safeguards such as age limits, taxation and impairment testing.”

“This bill continues a path ASTER already chose to walk. We voted months ago to treat drug use as a matter of health and personal choice rather than crime, and this simply extends that same logic to the one category of substance still under total prohibition: decriminalized possession paired with real treatment, not a cell. Full legalization of cannabis follows the same reasoning, built with genuine safeguards — a real minimum age, licensed retail instead of an unregulated market, and roadside sobriety testing to keep the roads safe even as the law grows more honest. The change to alcohol policy touches adult freedom more than public health, and eighteen is an age this country already treats as full adulthood in every other law we've passed. None of these three articles asks ASTER to abandon anything we believe; together, they simply finish an argument we already started. ASTER votes Yes.”